Wounded Knee: The Indian Struggle

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Taylor Koch Paper #1 9/15/2011 The Indian Struggle In the book “Bury My heart at Wounded Knee,” Dee Brown writes about the struggles and the violent attacks the Indians continually faced. Indians persistently trusted the white people and wanted to make peace but the white people continually deceived the Indians by taking their land, destroying their villages, and brutally murdering their people. The Indians wanted peace but knew it wasn’t an option, so they had no other choice but to fight the white men to be taken seriously and to get the land that was rightfully theirs. During 1851, at Fort Larmie the Cheyennes, Crow, Arapahos, and Sioux met with representatives to let the Americans construct roads and…show more content…
In 1865, the white men wanted to open a road in the Powder River country, and none of the Indians were pleased with this because of how much land was already taken from them (Pg. 124 Brown). “..Our women and children will starve, but for my part I prefer to die fighting than by starvation,” (Pg. 130, Brown), Red Cloud said this at a peace conference, although Red Cloud wanted peace he cared for his people more and didn’t want them to starve so he took a stand against the white men. All through the summer of 1866 Red Cloud’s ally White Chief was involved in a relentless guerrilla war fare. Travelers, Civilians, and soldiers were not safe from the surprise attacks along the Bozeman Road (Pg. 135 Brown). By the end of summer Red Cloud had more and more allies and his army grew to a force of three thousand warriors. On December 21, 1866 The Fetterman massacre occurred. During this massacre the Indians killed eighty-one of the soldiers through lots of skillful traps. Like what the soldiers did to the Indians bodies during the Sand Creek Massacre the Indians brutally hacked the bodies of the soldiers. This massacre was a big success for Indians, because the government finally started to take the Indians seriously. Red Cloud refused to meet with the government to form a peace treaty…show more content…
If the government would have listened to the Indians so many innocent Indians and soldiers that were only taking orders could have lived. The Indians seemed to never give up on the hope of one day getting their land back, because they continued to fight for what they believed was truly theirs. Overall the tribes that fought against the soldiers and the American Government had much longer freedom than the tribes that decide to be peaceful and cooperate with the American
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